“Soviet Ghosts” Is a Look at the Strange Beauty of the Abandoned Empire

Photographer and urban explorer Rebecca Litchfield did something most people wouldn’t risk–she crossed the battered ruins of the Soviet Union, risking arrest and radiation poisoning, to capture its decaying beauty. Her new book Soviet Ghosts is a collection of haunting photos of these desolate areas that are now modern day ghost towns of a former communist empire. “My aim of the book was to just capture it as it was now,” she says. “Some people may see the ruins of this time as destructive, but I see the beauty in the decay, like a memory hanging on that will soon be lost in a breeze, a museum that no one gets to see.” Browse the gallery to see pictures from the book; you can also see more via The Guardian.